The gusting winds are getting old, but then a storm comes next

Published Jan 19, 2016 at 8:23 PM

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I'm talking about that gusty wind from the northwest has howled for the past two days now - not even relenting at night. For the second day in a row, we had gusts to 50+ across Southern New England. Not much better for our friends to the north, gusts from Southern New Hampshire to Vermont and Maine were between 30 and 45 mph.

So now that our upper level low is pulling away, we have a chance to get out of the wind tunnel. Er, kinda. I still expect a good breeze tomorrow, with just a gentle wind on Thursday - but nowhere near as gusty as the last two days. Thankfully, the cold eases a bit too. Highs will close in on the 30 degree mark on both day across Southern New England. That's something to celebrate.

But that's probably not why you're reading this blog. You're looking for the details on the Saturday storm. The looming nor'easter. The potential bliz...

...no, not going there yet. Sure, if everything comes together and this storm tracks close enough, we're going to raise the red flags. But for now, we're taking the calculated, reasoned approach.

Storm has finally made it to the coast of Oregon! Recall that out over the ocean, data is more sparse than over land. That means there will be more accurate information going into forecasting the storm in the coming days. Which in turn means our forecasts will be more confident and detailed.

There have been some wobbles with the track of the storm over the last day. This is expected. The models that show it wandering away from New England this morning could turn around and show it jamming us with snow tonight or tomorrow. What is nagging me about the track isn't necessarily the wobbles of the storm, but the overall big picture.

It's a classic setup: high pressure to the north feeding cold air into the storm. Track shows it shooting off the Mid Atlantic coast and heading...out to sea? Closer to New England? Here's where the "gut feeling" takes over. Barring any blocking, the storm should climb towards us and scoot off of Nantucket. It's a combination of years of storm tracking and some intuition. Sometimes in spring (see big spring "nostorm" of 2014) blocking can shut us out completely. That does NOT seem to be the case this time.